


Dead Boy Walking

by cherrycola94



Category: Batman and Robin (Comics), DCU (Comics), Red Robin (Comics), Robin (Comics), Superboy (Comics), Young Justice (Comics), Young Justice - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, M/M, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombie Hunters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-28 17:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30143055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrycola94/pseuds/cherrycola94
Summary: “T...im,” K says. Tim freezes. The sound of someone else’s name, someone else’s simple name, gives K that funny feeling in his chest again.Tim doesn’t move at all, his wet eyes blinking and staring.OR: After an oddly self-aware zombie in a leather jacket saves the life of a pretty human boy during a hunting trip, they form a bond that transforms the world they know.
Relationships: Cissie King-Jones & Kon-El | Conner Kent, Past Tim Drake/Stephanie Brown, Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent
Comments: 19
Kudos: 40





	1. You Can’t Die At The End If You're Already Dead

**Author's Note:**

> this is literally warm bodies but timkon. probably my best idea yet B))

He’s dead, that’s certain. If the unnaturally pale skin and bloodshot weren’t telltale signs, the craving for human brains were certainly the cherry on top.

Okay, he didn’t really look like a movie zombie-- all green and disgusting. He looked more like a very tired, very sick college student in need of a small vacation back to where his family lived.

So you’re wondering what being a zombie’s like?

If he could talk properly, he’d tell you that it’s all _boring._ You seem brain dead (ha, ha) on the outside just like in the movies, but you are almost completely aware of whatever’s going on around you. Unlike the movies, you get almost none of the action and the screaming from helpless humans-- because humans were resourceful and careful. He’d been shot dozens of times by people and while it didn’t kill him, it certainly slowed him down until he lost his lunch.

As a zombie, you also slowly lose your memory. Not in a pleasant “it’s the end” kind of way but more in this weird, lost, lonely way. Like a more depressing take on amnesia.

You’re less scary, more… sad.

His consciousness is still intact, albeit a little fuzzy around the corners. That meant he wasn’t turned _too_ long ago, but big pieces of himself have decayed. He’d really like to tell someone his name, but all he remembered about it was that it started with a K. And when K tries to _really_ remember his full name, he thinks that his last name also started with a K… with an E sandwiched somewhere in there? Or did it start with an E and not have a K in it at all? Either way, his new first name was now “K” and he tried to hold onto that fact as long as he could.

Of course it would eventually be lost, but he tries not to dwell on that.

K lives with a group of the undead in an old mall at the edge of a town. He thinks it’s somewhere near Gotham City because of all the signs directing traffic toward the Gotham City courthouse outside. K didn’t really need shelter, but living under a roof of some sort gave him a little connection to their old humanity. All the zombies in the general area also all sort of agreed to live here, one of the rare times they communicated clearly enough to a point across to each other.

Unlike the others bumping into each other as they drag their feet across the floor, K mostly keeps to himself with the exception of _one_ other zombie. According to the nametag pinned to her chest, her name was _Cissie King-Jones._ K was a little jealous she could hold onto her name.

Since her last name _also_ started with a “K”, K wonders if they’d ever been married in their lives. Logically, they probably weren’t. K wore ripped jeans, a leather jacket and fingerless gloves while Cissie wore a yellowed plaid skirt and collared shirt with a black headband holding back her long hair. They were too different, and probably too young either way (K guesses he’s around twenty and that Cissie is about the same age). K also concluded in his fuzzy brain that the last name “King-Jones” didn’t quite _click_ with him. It didn’t feel familiar.

He tried to make a joke about it once, but his dead tongue relayed a series of unintelligible grunts. Cissie snorted back.

It was the closest thing they had to an actual conversation. Every day they kept trying to spit out sentences, but instead they spat out moldy flecks of skin at each other for a bit before giving up.

When K’s not hanging out with Cissie, he’s in the nicest place in the mall-- the dusty flower shop that served as his own little apartment. There are peeling pictures of bright faces and bright flowers stuck to the grimy windows. Every day K makes sure to water the four remaining flowerpots in his “store” with running water from a tap in the back. He doesn’t worry about the other dead ones messing up his space-- they rarely take the time to come up here walking up the broken escalator. And they certainly were not capable enough to use the lever that pulled the large metal screen up and down over the entrance.

On this gloomy gray day, Cissie finds K watering his plants (since she’s the only person who bothered to visit him up here).

“Eee,” Cissie says to K when she’s within his general vicinity. This translates to _eat,_ a word she liked to say. Cissie turns on her heel, not bothering to see if he follows her down the stairs.

K grunts in affirmation and follows her down.

On their way toward the exit of the mall, fifteen more of their comrades follow them. Their kind liked to hunt in packs, their strategy to corner and surprise. K personally thinks all the grunting and shuffling gave them away a good chunk of the time, but they occasionally got lucky and landed a good meal that lasted them a few days.

Cissie leads them down a narrow street, walking shoulder-to-shoulder with K. As they walk, they stumble over loose rocks with their dragging feet and breathe heavily (why did K breathe when he didn’t need the oxygen? It didn’t make sense to him), but they’re quiet enough to surprise a distracted human.

They make it to a boarded-up apartment building when they smell the scent of life. The smell is faint but intoxicating-- if K’s brain worked, it would render him helplessly dizzy.

“Thn,” K grunts as loudly as he can and points to the building. His friends stop in their tracks and start shuffling faster toward the building’s entrance, like the humans’ scent alone gave them more energy. Maybe it did.

K falls back a little and lets the others push him until the hoard reaches a boarded-up pharmacy on the first floor. With two solid kicks from Cissie (she was their strongest next to K), the boards snap in half and the door opens.

Inside the enormous room, are four young people-- a red-haired boy, a black-haired boy, a beanpole with a buzzcut, and a girl with short blonde hair. They’re clad in military-esque clothing, wearing sturdy backpacks and holding a fair arsenal of weapons. They stare at entrance K and his friends enter from in shock before snapping back to reality.

The ginger is a large mass of hulking muscle, and he fearlessly takes on Cissie. He holds her face back with a gloved hand, snaps her arm in half like a toothpick, and shoots her in the stomach. The black goo leaking out of the wound slows her, but she perseveres.

K steps back and watches the rest of his amateur strike force do their thing. 

The bald boy jumps onto a medicine shelf bolted down to the floor like a monkey. Someone grabs his leg and attempts to take a bite, but he breaks free from the grasp with impossible strength. He kicks three zombies in the face with one large sweeping motion and shoots them all in the eyes with expert aim.

The third boy is beautiful. He stands up on the front counter and frantically loads up his shotgun. He brushes silky black hair out of his eyes frantically and his wild eyes take in the intruders. He uses a collapsible staff to knock back a few zombies and winces slightly in sympathy when he shoots legs and grabbing hands.

Just as K’s slow brain realizes that someone else is missing from the picture, he feels something crash into the back of his head with enough force to bring him down to his knees.

“Take that!” A voice yells, no doubt the blonde girl.

K shoots up with impossible speed (K guesses it’s because he’s so _close_ to a good meal) and slams chest-first against the girl, knocking her into an empty shelf.

“Steph!” Someone yells from behind K, and he feels a bullet lodge itself into his spine.

_Dang._ K thinks. _There’s a hole in my… jacket. Fix it later._

K whacks the girl’s head-- Steph’s head-- into the wall a few times. After the third try, she crumples into a heap on the floor like a deflated balloon. K grunts with satisfaction and grabs her by her ankles. He drags her over to a shelf and smashes her head against a sharp corner to crack her it in half. Like an egg. As he works, Cissie limps over. She leaks black goo everywhere, and starts to gnaw on Steph’s limp hand until it comes loose from her body. She grunts at K and leaves with her snack.

Fragrant red blood drips down K’s fingers and it takes an _insane_ amount of self control to not give into his hunger. He must wait until he gets to the best part. K smiles (well, he smiles as nicely as a dead boy can) when the skull finally breaks open with a satisfying _crack!_ A beautiful mess of pale skin hangs off her skull, her golden hair spreads out everywhere, chips of her bloody bone stick to K’s hands, and _oh boy_ her fresh brain pulses like a heartbeat. K inhales deeply, taking in the delicious smell of fading life before cramming a sizable chunk of the pinkish-red delight into his mouth.

***

Stephanie Brown, age nine.

I run toward the bathroom door and lock it, my dad bangs on the door.

“Open up!” He yells. I don’t open it. Instead, I push against the door as hard as I can to keep it shut.

“OPEN UP!” My dad screams. The wooden door splits open in the middle and his hand reaches through and he’s grabbing at the air, trying--

I’m walking into sophomore English. It’s only been a year since the virus spread, and they all still want us to attend. The electric chain link fences strung around the main cluster of downtown Gotham buildings keeps the zombies out, and Bruce Wayne’s working on a way to fix up the barricade. He’s been voted in as the temporary mayor since the old one had a bullet put in his brain before he fully turned, and he’s been trying to get things to be as normal as possible.

But it’ll never be normal. 

I sit down with my friend Harper at the back of class and wait for the teacher. Normally, we’d talk about stuff, but nobody feels much like talking nowadays.

“Welcome!” An adult says when they enter. Our old teacher had a breakdown and committed suicide and instead of giving us some time off to process grief or throw stones at the windows of abandoned buildings as a cry of frustration, the school board gives us a new teacher the next day.

“Today we’ll be welcoming a new kid here,” The teacher claps their hands and on that cue, a scrawny black-haired boy walks in. “Say hello to Timothy Drake.”

“Uh, it’s actually Tim Drake… Wayne,” The boy shyly corrects. His backpack looks brand-new, his clothes are pressed nicely, and his hair is combed back carefully. Of course he’s a rich Wayne boy.

He scans the class and we lock eyes for a minute. He looks like he’s about to walk over to--

“You _sure_ you wanna enroll?” Tim asks me. We’re lying down on the floor of his huge room, looking up at the fake stars he set up on his ceiling. “It’s pretty tough.”

“I’m sure,” I say, turning onto my side. I comb my fingers through his hair gently.

“Alright,” Tim says, closing his eyes. “But it’s dangerous. I mean, you could just get a job inside the city. Anyone would leap for a new grad.”

“Hey, you go out on supply missions all the time,” I poke him in the chest and sit up. “You don’t see me worrying.”

“I guess I don’t,” Tim sits up and we lock eyes. Gorgeous blue, like the sky on good days. “And just because you’re a cadet and I’m a captain, doesn’t mean that I’ll go easy on you.”

“I’m counting on it,” I say. His hand reaches for the back of my head and we get closer, closer, closer--

“First raid,” I pat Tim on the shoulder. He hides it well, but he’s very distant. I thought we could be friends after he broke it off, but when we’re alone together he acts just as awkwardly as he did when I first met him.

“I know,” Tim nods and grins, showing off his perfect white teeth. “I’m proud of you.” That he might be, but he certainly doesn’t show it outside of the occasional nod of approval.

“Alright, listen up,” Derek snaps his fingers at us, but it’s hard to take him seriously when he looks like an egg. His new haircut did him no favors. “What’s the plan, everyone?”

“Get into the pharmacy, stuff the backpacks, and go,” Caz says, loading bullets into guns. He tosses me one and I catch it my right hand.

“Don’t do that,” Derek chides.

“We’re also going to try to _not_ engage in combat,” I continue, ignoring Derek as I stash my pistol into the holster hanging off my hip. “Because those monsters have good hearing.”

“Good,” Derek nods. “And I know you all know this, but if someone gets bitten or infected, we have to ki--”

“Whatever,” I wave. “It’s all gonna be fine. We’ll stay safe.”

***

_Who_ am _I?_ K sits back, looking at his hands. He breathes hard and fast-- he’s never experienced someone’s memories this intensely. It’s almost like... drugs. Or how he’d imagine doing drugs.

Instead of eating the remaining brain right there, he crams small chunks of it into the small pouch hanging off his belt. He could eat it another time for another high.

K takes in his surroundings. Steph’s body is now missing her arms and a foot. His friends are still fending off the boys, the tall one-- Caz-- retreats while punching zombies in the face, the acrobat-- Derek-- is right beside Jason, but the pretty boy is behind the counter. They yell at him to come, but he stands rooted to his spot like a tree.

Tim Drake-Wayne is his name.

Tim’s screaming the word “leave!” at Caz and Derek while standing against three zombies from K’s group. He seems to be doing well, but based on how close a certain pink-haired zombie’s getting, Tim might be a lunchtime meal soon.

Instead of not caring about this, instead of leaving everyone behind like he normally would, K finds himself picking through the pack of zombies and getting as close as he can to Tim. A bullet enters his thigh from Tim’s direction, but he still stands.

“My,” K snarls at the pink-haired zombie. He makes a loud growling sound, one that hopefully sounds intimidating. “Miiiiiiiine.” K then points to Stephanie Brown’s corpse. “Eat.”

Pinky snarls at him, so K shoves them back toward Steph’s body. They seem to catch sight of all the red and sluggishly turn the rest of their body around toward the dead girl. Some more follow. K relaxes a little, and turns to Tim.

Tim shakes before him, too scared to make a sound. K feels something odd in his chest at the sight of the boy. It didn’t feel like a bullet to his heart, but more like something moving _inside_ him. It calms K’s urge to eat, and prompts him to hold out a hand while walking closer to Tim. The human holds up his gun and tries to shoot, but all he’s met with is a pathetic click. He stares at the weapon in disbelief. K’s now only a few feet away, his hand still stretched out like a lifeline when--

_THUNK._

A small knife lodges itself into K’s forehead. It cuts open a gash of black blood before clattering to the floor. K picks it up slowly and puts it into his jacket pocket. He continues walking forward. Tim scrambles backward while patting down the utility belt hanging off his hips with desperation, but he’s met no weapons and a shelf trapping him behind the counter with K.

“T...im,” K says. Tim freezes. The sound of someone else’s name, someone else’s simple name, gives K that funny feeling in his chest again.

“Tim,” K repeats. “C...ome.”

Tim doesn’t move at all, he only blinks through tears and stares right back.

His eyes are oddly sharp. K decides that he likes looking at them. 

“Sa-fe,” K slurs, putting a hand to his chest. He then smears the blood pooling out of the cut his forehead and the bullet wound in his thigh against his hands. He leans down to Tim and slowly spreads the gooey black liquid against the human’s cheeks and neck.

“Wh--” Tim’s breathing quickens.

“Shhh,” K smears some zombie blood onto Tim’s mouth, effectively shutting him up. “N...no ta-lk.” Eating a part of Stephanie Brown’s brain has given him a bigger vocabulary, something he appreciates.

K looks around and finds a fallen zombie near them. He uses the knife from his pocket to cut open and arm and rub some more zombie blood onto his jacket. K shrugs off the jacket and hands it over to Tim.

“Am I supposed to wear this?” Tim whispers.

K nods. “Y…”

“Okay...” Tim swaps his city camouflage jacket for K’s leather one. He looked good in it, despite it being a size too big.

K wonders why he thought that.

K stands. “C...ome,” He holds out his hand.

Tim looks at it, a little nervous, but he accepts.

The others seem to have captured Derek, ripping his limbs apart like turkey legs on Thanksgiving. Tim makes a small whimpering sound as they pass them, but K hushes him with a firm squeeze of his hand.

“Go,” K tells his friends as he passes by. Tim’s eyes are straight ahead, burning a hole into the door. K knows he wants to leave, and he’ll do his best to get him out of here. Cissie looks up and stomps a foot onto the ground. The rest grunt dismissively and continue eating Steph and Derek. This means that she’ll come along with K and Tim, but the rest will stay and try to hunt some more.

“Hmm,” K groans and walks out. Tim staggers behind him and Cissie follows them.

Tim’s too scared to speak to K (even while dead, K had incredible perception) and K can’t really speak to Tim (though he’d like to) so they walk in silence.

Cissie soon overtakes them. It’s easy for her to do so because K’s pace is slowed by thoughts about Stephanie Brown’s life. Someone who was friends with Tim, then briefly lovers, and then bumped down to acquaintances. Stephanie Brown seemed like a good enough person and K wondered why Tim broke it off between them. Maybe she wasn't as good as her memories made her out to be? Or maybe her memories made Tim seem like a better person than what he really was...

After fifteen minutes of steady foot-shuffling, they reach the mall’s garage entrance. When they enter the main level, Cissie limps off to the food court. Tim looks around in wonder. K thinks he'd like to see the rest of the mall, but they can't risk having him walk around near so many zombies.

K guides Tim to the safest place they can go-- up the broken escalator to his home. K cranks open the metal shutter and closes it behind them once they're inside. K points to Tim, and then to a red chair stained with black beside one of the windows. An old boom box sits on a table next to it.

Tim seems to have gotten the message. He approaches the chair slowly and sits down. K crosses to the other side of the room-- he can tell Tim wants some space-- and sits on the floor. He wheezes, an annoying little sound he could never control, before opening his mouth.

“Not… eat,” K looks up at Tim. Tim stares at K, his shoulders tense under K’s jacket. K doesn’t blame him for being uncomfortable.

K points to Tim’s face and opens his mouth, showing off his bloody teeth. He wheezes again (annoyingly) before closing his jaw and shaking his head. Tim only tenses more, gripping the arms of his chair until his knuckles turn white. K sighs.

“Safe…” K grunts, the word Stephanie Brown used in her newest memory. “Stay safe.” He points at Tim’s face again.

Tim still looks wary. K sighs again. He didn’t know how to prove his newfound gentleness to the human, so he decides to simply pretend Tim isn’t there.

He walks over to the boom box and turns it on. A song plays, rattling the cheap speakers. It’s something by The Clash, K knows because it says so on the little screen.

_I’m all lost in the supermarket…_

K nods slowly along with the tune, his head bobbing on every other beat. The loud sound echoes around the flower shop and vibrates in his body. Tim watches him for a minute or two and then tears his eyes away to check out the rest of the shop. K follows his gaze to the orchids and the lilies by the other window, to the stack of old books pushed into the corner, and then to a pile of semi-clean clothes hanging off of a shelf.

He's confused, K can see it in the way he furrows his brow.

“What _are_ you?” Tim whispers, loud enough to hear over the music. His stare is unnerving, so K turns his head away.

“Keep you… sa…fe,” K stands.

“Why?” Tim asks.

K shrugs. He didn’t really know either.

Maybe he’d fallen in love.


	2. Bad Ideas and Good Memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> brain brrr

Tim sleeps very well for someone who was so scared half an hour earlier. K’s been snorting and moving plant pots to sunnier places while the boombox plays Green Day songs, and the raven-haired boy’s head still hangs low somehow. K debates moving him into a more comfortable position, like lying down with his back to the floor, but he thinks that Tim’s trust in him is already at its limits.

So he turns off the loud music and leaves the human alone.

K opens the shutters as slowly as he can (he learns that slowness does not equate to silence, but Tim still sleeps soundly) and he creeps outside the shop. For good measure, he bites a chunk of his skin off and smears the goo against the floor in front of his home and onto the walls bordering the store. The smell is lifeless and depressing. It’s perfect.

K walks downstairs via a lesser known route by the rest of the mall zombies, leading directly to the garage. He walks until he reaches a 1967 Chevrolet Impala collecting dust by the garage exit.

This car is the only project K’s taken on besides watering his little plants in the flower shop. The first day he saw the car, he was overwhelmed with a vague feeling of coolness. It almost felt like a memory. A dull spark of instant connection.

So, he reached through the Impala’s open window and pulled out the former owner’s body onto the pavement. It wasn’t the greatest meal he had-- the blood ran sluggishly from the skull when he crushed it open against the cement pillars, and the memories were stale when he bit into the brain’s layers-- but it was something. And he appreciated something.

K then patted down the person’s remains for keys, and after a few days of this boring routine he was finally rewarded with a bright red Spider-Man keychain. He inserted different keys into different locks methodically and figured out what went where over the course of a week. He taught himself how to fill up the near-empty tank using the barrel of gasoline kept in the trunk. After opening the glove compartment when he unlocked the passenger seat, he read the instruction manual tucked inside. Now, K knows that “his” car has many parts. 327 Engine. 119-inch wheelbase. Front-disc brakes. Stereo 8-track player. Fiber optic light monitoring system. Vacuum power door locks. Four barrel carburetor. Words he knows he meaning to but he doesn’t know how or why he does.

After four days of sitting in the passenger seat of the car, K was suddenly reminded of how to insert the key and start the car. The machine hummed to life, stirring something inside of him but not quite waking it up.

But he had no idea how to drive. He still doesn’t.

The best K’s ever done was back out of the parking spot and ram against a nearby motorcycle. K tried to work on the motorcycle as well, but it was too… flimsy. His clumsy body didn’t work well with the beautiful bike, which annoyed him. He had a small feeling that when he was alive, he preferred riding motorcycles to cars.

Sometimes-- like now, he’s approaching the car and unlocking the doors-- K sits in “his” car and tries to remember how he was as a human. Not some watered-down hint of his old personality, but something as clear as the lakes in the vacation ads flashing across the mall’s screens. Something as sharp as the knife Tim sliced his forehead open with earlier.

Tim. 

K fingers the pouch holding Steph Brown’s brain. He shouldn’t eat it this soon… but her memories are so _clean_ and _pristine._ K’s mouth would be watering at the thought of the taste of that pinkish red meat, if he had any water in his body.

_Fuck it._ K thinks. He unzips the pocket and places a small bit of brain under his tongue.

July 19th. Almost a month older and he’ll never let me forget it.

It’s Tim’s eighteenth birthday and we’re at the downtown Promenade park by the new city border. I could probably see the mall from beyond the buzzing chain link fence if I were to climb a tree.

This park is the only place from my childhood that I actually like to visit from time to time. I remember eating ice cream with my mom before our family went to shit-- she liked soft-serve vanilla but I always asked for a double scoop rocky road chocolate cone. I remember how itchy the grass was when I rolled down the artificial hills, and it still itches when Tim and I sit together on it.

I’m amazed at how well everything’s going now. Two years ago, this place looked like a disgusting brown wasteland; crowded with camps of sick and dying people. But now? It’s green and teeming with life. Nobody else is around and there’s a faint sprinkling of gray ash over everything but if I squint I can almost imagine everything’s the same as it was ten years ago.

Tim pulls out his little journal out of a pocket in cargo shorts. The front of the brown leather cover is worn and decorated with white folds-- he was always a little careless with his things. The inside is covered in his messy cursive and random meaningless diagrams. I sit with my shoulder touching his, messing around with a rusty BB gun I found abandoned on the sidewalk.

_“Whoosh,”_ I shoot a fake bullet into the air in front of me.

“Mmm,” Tim says, not looking up.

“What’s up?” I put my head on his shoulder, trying to get a sneak peek of whatever he’s writing. It’s probably some research for a cure, even though we’ve got anybody and everybody who knows the barest things about science looking.

He snaps the journal shut and holds it away from me. “Not tellin’,”

“Ah, because looking for a cure is so important,” I pick at a fluffy dandelion by my knee. I feel Tim shift against me and his arm settles around my shoulders.

“I don’t know… I feel restless just waiting for something,” Tim sighs. “I don’t know…” He says again. “I just wish we could get this over with.” He picks up a fistful of loose grass and throws it, scattering green in the wind.

“We’ll need more time,” I lift my head off of him and look at his face. He’s got that look in his eyes-- the steely, determined stare he gets when he’s thinking hard. “For now, let’s just celebrate. It’s your _birthday,”_ I poke his cheek with a knuckle on the last word.

He looks at me and for a moment I’m afraid he’ll push me away and go off on a rant about how important his work was to him, or how it kept him sane

but he smiles at me. And I feel myself relax.

“Yeah.” Tim’s cheek presses against the top of my head. “It’s my birthday.”

“Then let’s take a photo to remember this very special moment in time,” I pull out the Polaroid camera I lifted from the corner store.

“Aw,” Tim puts a hand on his chest. “You’re wasting your film on me?”

“Shut up,” I shove his shoulder playfully and position the--

K’s back in his car, holding onto the steering wheel like a lifeline. He’s annoyed at how quickly the memory cut out. He tries to hold onto the peaceful feeling the park date gave him, but it slips away when his eyes take in the garage.

“M..ore,” He tells himself. It's a bad idea. If he wanted to keep the high that was Stephanie Brown, he should take it slow... But he's hooked. He's addicted to this story. He wants to see Tim smiling again, for some weird reason.

K swears he feels that funny feeling in chest again-- the one he got when he saved Tim-- but it vanishes as quickly as it it happens.

_Just one more…_

We’re at our secret spot. The highest floor on the old Wayne Enterprises building that Bruce Wayne had declared off-limits due to its unstable structure. I hold out a hand and pull Tim up to a spot where you can see the sky past the crumbling concrete beams.

He spreads out a checkered picnic blanket onto the dirty floor and coughs a little, stirring up a cloud of dust particles. I lie flat on my back, and he lies down next to me. We look up at the never-ending expanse of blue. Blue like his eyes on good days.

“I miss planes,” Tim says after he’s settled in a comfortable position, his arms folded behind his head.

“Planes?” I ask. It’s a weird thing to miss. I think about other things, like fireworks shooting sparks upward. Concert lights shining against the cloud at night. Kites flying as high.

“I don’t miss flying in them, I just miss… seeing planes,” He traces an invisible line in the sky. “The noise they make during takeoff was the only thing I’d hear before sleeping. And those lines the jets made, remember that? It looked like they were making clouds. Dick used to say it looked like Etch A Sketch.”

I smile at the thought. I guess planes were beautiful.

“You remember things well,” I trace my own invisible lines across the sky, pretending a plane is attached and making the patterns instead of my imagination.

“They tell me I’ve got a photographic memory,” Tim says in a fake British accent. I smile and close my eyes. The sun looks orange behind my eyelids and I let the warmth soak into my bones.

I turn my head to face Tim, but he’s already looking at me. Red flushes to my cheeks.

“What?” I ask. His eyes are trained on me like an unsolvable question. 

“Can I kiss you?” He asks slowly, the words thick in his mouth.

I t--

Dingy garage lights welcome K back from his trip down memory lane. K tries to remember the warmth of the sunlight-- the warmth! It felt so _human--_ but his body is as cold as ice no matter what he does. He thinks about consuming another memory, but he stops himself.

_One at a time._ He thinks to himself, though he just broke that rule.

He kills the engine with a sharp twist of the key and leaves the car.

K walks back up the “secret” garage staircase up to his shop and stands before the shutters. He stares at the blood he rubbed around it for a minute or two, smelling death, and then opens it all up.

Tim is somehow still sleeping, his chin touching his chest and barely moving. K would think he were dead if he couldn’t hear the soft sounds of Tim’s breathing.

K trips over his own dragging foot and crashes into the tiled floor with a loud _THUD._ He curses himself with a small grunt and Tim’s eyes fly open at the sound. A pocketknife magically appearing in his hand. He then somewhat relaxes at the sight of K-- _the idiot zombie_ K assumes is what Tim's thinking-- and lets his shoulders loosen a little. The human watches carefully as K gets closer.

And close he is! K is now close enough to count the light splash of freckles under Tim’s eyes and across his cheekbones.

_His freckles come out in the sun..._ K thinks. And he wonders why of all things he had just seen from Stephanie's point of view, he remembered that little detail.

Without breaking their miniature staring contest, K touches the strap of Tim’s backpack with his cleaner hand. Tim’s eyebrows scrunch together for a second, then break apart the next. Tim slips off his backpack and places it onto the floor. K paws through the stuff inside-- aspirin, Tylenol, rubbing alcohol-- until he reaches the bottom and finds a thick leather wallet. He flips it open and peaks into every pocket of it until he finds a polaroid photo of Tim right after his eighteenth birthday, his right cheek pressed against Stephanie Brown's face. K holds up the photo like a child showing their parents a bad grade on a test. It burns a hole of guilt through his pale hand.

“I’m… sorry,” His voice is hoarse.

Tim looks at K, then the photo, then at K again. K opens his mouth and points to his teeth. He then rubs his stomach in one big circular motion. He makes a “mmm” sound to top it all off. If he were human he’d be sweating like crazy now under Tim’s glare.

Tim looks like he’s holding in a deep breath, eyes turning glassier and glassier.

“Who did it?” He whispers harshly, in a broken voice. The sound chills K to the bone. “Was it the pink one? Or the blonde that got Derek?”

K stares at the human for a moment, confused. And then it all clicks.

Tim didn’t know he killed Steph. The room was crowded and in chaos when he fought the girl in the corner. Many people took bites out of her body.

Tim’s icy blue eyes hold a simple question, unaware that K killed the person he was closest to, smashed her head against a shelf until it cracked and devoured her brain to feel something again. Tim didn’t know that K stuffed a chunk of the girl’s consciousness into his bloody fanny pack to snack on later for pleasure. K blinked once, blinked twice, just to make sure Tim wasn’t bluffing.

“Why me?” Tim says, his voice stronger. He’s faking anger now, trying to move past that moment of weakness. “Why’d you save me?” Then something in Tim’s demeanor shifts and he falls backward onto the fluffy armchair, suddenly overcome by sadness. “Caz, Derek, Steph…” He says to himself. “Why _me?”_

Something in the way Tim asked those questions made K's fingers loosen and drop the photo. He watches it flutter down to the ground, twisting and turning in the air. He looked at the faces on it before pushing it away with his foot.

“Sorry,” K says plainly, a large lump stuck behind his Adam's apple. He doesn’t know what else to say to the grieving boy. He thinks it’s for the best if he leaves Tim alone in the flower shop for a while.

So K walks away.

He bites his hand open again, reapplies the smudges of blood along the outside, and walks off into the twisty labyrinth of the mall.


	3. An (Awkwardly) Awesome Brunch "Date"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the maximum experience i want you all to listen to rom-com gone wrong by matt maltese while reading this chapter. just do it

In the morning, Cissie finds K sitting against the counter of the Capital One kiosk on the first floor by the Dairy Queen. His head hangs limply to his right and his lifeless blue eyes are wide open, full of dust that accumulated over the night. Something bubbling in his stomach mirrors a feeling of hunger-- a feeling K thought he’d never feel since his transformation.

K’s never acted this way. Cissie knows it too, because she pulls him to his feet with a sharp tug on his arm. Cissie starts walking, dragging him behind her like a child with a toy dog. K finds this annoying for some reason, and yanks his arm back.

“Name?” K snarls as Cissie’s fingers dig deeper into his forearm. She could never pronounce her name, but K bet Tim could say it effortlessly. Cissie ignores him, so he asks again.

“Name.”

She grunts and keeps walking onward. K knows where they’re going-- to her place, the sports store across from an Old Navy. Thinking about going there with her makes K even more angry.

“Job? School?” K presses. “Movie? Song?

Cissie grunts again.

“Book?” K’s voice is now the loudest it’s ever been and it’s equally as scratchy. It earns him confused glances from surrounding zombies, but he doesn’t care. “Home? _Name?”_

Cissie stops in the middle of the tiled pathway and actually _spits_ a fleck of browning human skin and bloody blackish saliva on K’s gray shirt. K steps back with a disgusted look on his face. He looks at Cissie, preparing to fight her, but the look in her distant eyes makes him stop.

She’s afraid. Her eyebrows are meeting in the center of her face.

_What am I doing?_ K looks down at his sneakers in shame. They were white at some point, but now they’re caked with mud and dried blood. A dirty neon yellow lace on his left shoe and a dull red lace on his right. He stands there in silence with Cissie, doing nothing for several minutes. Then Cissie starts walking away to the working escalators. K hated standing on the escalators to pass time. It’s a big “fuck you” to him, and an exit by Cissie.

_Fine._ K turns on his heel and walks back to where his flower shop is.

  
  


***

  
  


K’s been slowly pacing outside of his own home for an hour before making up his mind and entering. He opens the shutters quietly.

Tim’s sleeping position has changed. He’s now curled up on the floor around his backpack in a beam of direct sunlight, sleeping. It gives him a golden glow, turning his black hair a shade of earthy brown. At some point in the night he wrapped K’s jacket around his shoulders like a too-small blanket. K is… pleased at the sight.

He clears his throat. Tim opens a single tired eye, the least jumpy he’s been around K.

“What?” Tim yawns widely. K opens his mouth out of reflex, and he swears he sees Tim flash him a confused smile.

“How…” K takes in an awkward breath. “Are…” 

“How am I?” Tim’s face darkens. “How do you _think_ I am?”

K wheezes and turns away, embarrassed. He starts to backtrack toward the door again.

“Wait, wait,” Tim calls, his voice thick with sleepiness. K turns around again. Tim runs a hand through his messy hair. It’s longer than it was in Stephanie Brown’s memories, the side bangs coming down to his chin and touching the back of his neck. In K’s opinion, it suits him more than his short hair ever did.

“I’m hungry,” He says.

K looks at Tim.

Hungry? Did he want to eat an arm or a leg? Drink blood? K’s brain may be slowly rotting away, but he knows for sure that Tim wouldn’t happily dig into a human body part as happily as he would.

Then, K remembers Stephanie Brown’s thoughts. Her longing for something other than the nutrition-packed gruel the government fed them; waffles topped with sugary maple syrup, crunching on handfuls of Cheez Itz, the tartness of berry juices… Now K misses snacks like these. Human food did nothing to satisfy his hunger. Not even chewing on a dead animal’s body would fix the aching he felt in his skin when he hadn’t eaten in a while.

“Food?” Tim asks. He stands up, cracking a dozen bones in the process. K cringes.

Tim pretends to take a bite out of an invisible sandwich. “Something that isn’t human?”

K nods at him. “Get… y...you,” K starts to leave again, but Tim reaches out to grab his shoulder. The simple action makes K’s muscles seize up and he’s _very_ aware of how thin his gray shirt is.

“Why don’t you just… let me go?” He asks. “Why’re you keeping me here?”

K steps away and motions toward the closest window. Tim squints outside, his eyes obviously adjusting to the brightness of the sun this early in the morning (7? 9? K wishes he had an accurate watch) and spots a crowd of zombies hanging out near an abandoned Jeep. They all work methodically to pull apart the body of a large woman and hand each other pieces. Tim turns away, gagging silently.

“Safe,” K says, pointing to the chair and boombox.

Tim stares out the window again, but it seems like his eyes have moved beyond the zombie feast and toward the horizon. The sun is still painting the sky a shade of light blue, leaving behind a sloppy mixture oranges, yellows, and reds. K didn’t appreciate the view enough. It made him feel… grounded.

“How do you know my name?” Tim asks, not taking his eyes off of the sunrise. He pulls on K’s jacket in on smooth movement and shoulders his backpack. “You said it in the pharmacy.”

K can’t even begin to answer the question-- not with the technicalities of absorbing memories. Not with his slow speech pattern and toddler vocabulary. So the words hang in the air between them, sitting there like a loaded gun.

“Let me come with you,” Tim shoves his hands into the jacket pockets.

K shakes his head.

“C’mon,” Tim nudges K’s shoulder a little, like he did with his friends. “I came in here and nobody looked twice. Let me go with you to get food. You don’t even know what type of food I like.”

That statement was false, actually.

K knows Tim loves a cold salmon sushi platter with an unhealthy amount of soy sauce drizzled atop of it. He knows Tim would kill for a bowl of homemade minestrone soup with abnormally hard garlic croutons. K knows his head shoots upward with anticipation at the slightest scent of fresh bakery bread. But he can’t use those facts to impress Tim. _Those_ facts belonged to Steph Brown’s dead body and brain.

So, K puts a heavy hand on Tim’s shoulder, looks the human right in the eyes, and says one very important word:

“Dead,”

K removes his hand and stretches his arms out in front of him in a caricature of a zombie walk. K limps around in a slow circle, letting out random wheezes and groans.

“Ohhhkay?” Tim watches K for a few seconds. He then tries out the zombie gait for himself-- it’s horribly done, more like a child on Halloween. However, it’s good enough to pass for a dramatic zombie so K doesn’t correct him further.

K grabs a fistful of the jacket Tim’s wearing (his jacket!) and leads the human down the hallway, but before they make it to the broken escalator he smells something. A spring of energy pouring out from his left. It made his pupils dilate, added a spring in his step. He realizes that what he’s smelling is Tim. The human has scratched all of K’s day-old blood off of his body, only tiny specks hang onto his skin.

“Wa...it,” K puts a firm hand against Tim’s chest. Touching him seems… odd. K isn’t sure if he liked feeling Tim’s heartbeat under his palm or if it made him want to sprint away as quickly as he could (which wasn’t fast, but he was itching to try).

“What?”

K makes a loud sniffing sound and points to Tim’s forehead. The longer he stands next to him, the more powerful the scent of life energy gets.

“You can smell me?” Tim’s eyes widen with fear. 

K nods slowly. He lightly pats down his jean pockets and pulls out Tim’s knife.

Tim flicks his wrist sharply and another knife appears in his hand. “Hey. What’re you doing?”

“Calm…” K holds up the knife to his own hand. Tim watches as he carefully cuts a long, thin line of black across his sickly skin. Black goo drips out slowly and K lets it pool a little before gently approaching. K spreads his blood against Tim’s cheeks, neck, and the jacket again in a surprisingly intimate fashion. The human shudders at first but he soon relaxes and lets K apply it. He looks like a football player about to go off to a game, but he smells like the dead.

“Okay,” K says when he finishes, wiping the blade of the knife against the end of his shirt and hands it to Tim.

“You can keep it,” Tim says, eyeing the black bite marks on K’s fingers. “I have this feeling that you’ll need it again.”

“Hmm,” K tucks the knife back into his pockets. “Now… go.” He starts going down the broken escalator. Tim follows closely. It’s a good thing his scent is now covered, because K knows how many zombies like to hang out in the shadows on the second floor. He points to a few lurking around when they go down, and pats Tim’s arm with reassurance.

“Don’t… run,” He leads Tim away.

Tim gulps, a little nervous. “Okay,” He hunches behind K a little. It’s unnecessary since he’s about five inches shorter, but if it makes him feel safer K won't judge him. They walk past multiple zombies shuffling past them on both sides, and to K’s relief nobody attempts to take a bite out of Tim.

As for Tim, his fear seems to diminish with every step the duo takes. Sometimes K sees him fighting a smile after letting out a stupidly loud moan or a vaguely sexual groan, sometimes he lets a corny grin slip out after making a sound. K smiles too, but he doesn’t let Tim catch it. This is different from what K’s used to. 

This is nice.

  
  


***

  
  


K gets an odd look from Tim when he takes him to the sushi bar. He pretends he doesn’t see.

The power to the mall cuts out about once or twice a week due to faulty power lines and the remaining Gothamites trying to redirect all power supplies to their barricade downtown. This means that any food left in fridges before the world went to shit has probably gone bad three times over. K knows it’s probably a little hopeless to find food for Tim there, but he crosses his fingers in the rare occasion that they find something edible.

“Oh,” Tim gags when they near the muck that was formerly sushi back when K was alive. “That-- no thanks.” K can’t actually smell, besides human life. So things like the dried-up rot, dead maggots, or mold caking the edges of the sushi bar don't bother him much. But judging by Tim’s current expression, the stench is vile enough to knock out a grown human.

K tugs on Tim’s sleeve and takes him to ye olde Burger King instead. There’s a ridiculously large walk-in freezer stashed at the back. Dead flies and some dead maggots have found their way inside and their bodies lie on the floor of the freezer. On the brighter side, the fridge is half-full with boxes of beef, chicken, and pork patties. K knows they might be a little bad, being thawed and refrozen a bunch of times but if they turned on a stove it might kill any bacteria in the meat-- right? He didn’t have to cook humans, so he didn’t really know…

“Mmm?” K gestures to the fridge.

Tim stands there, his eyes flicking from K to the food.

“You really know how to take a guy out for brunch,” Tim brushes a couple of dead flies off the top of a random box and looks inside. His face doesn’t exactly light up like it did when he ate the burgers on the boardwalk, but he looks satisfied enough. “This looks good. If I’m allowed to get a fire going, it could even be decent.” He looks up at K. _“Can_ I turn the stove on?”

K nods. Zombies didn’t detect heat, and they were too far from others.

Tim rolls up the sleeves of K’s jacket and fails. He tries again. He fails.

“Off,” K motions taking off a jacket. 

“Here?” Tim asks warily. "I won't smell?"

K nods.

“Okay…” Tim replies. He puts his backpack down onto the floor and throws the jacket overtop of it. Then he walks over to the sink. K doesn’t think the rusty tap would let water flow freely from them, but it spits out a rusty stream of liquid. “It works!” Tim spreads his hands at the sink in triumph and smiles at K. “I didn’t actually expect that to work.” He waits until the water runs clear before dragging K over.

He stares at Tim with a funny look on his face as the water runs over his hands.

_“You’re_ cooking,” He clarifies. “I can’t afford to wash your… lovely cologne off.” Tim mimes washing his hands, rubbing them together. K copies the movement and soon all the grime cakes under his fingernails are clean. K is slightly disgusted with how dirty he’s let himself become.

K steps back after lathering his hands (and his wrists. He didn’t want to give Tim food poisoning) and lets Tim examine them.

“Good. Clean,” He says. “Now let me…” Tim takes part of the nozzle of-- the part normally used for washing dishes-- and aims it directly at a grill nearby. He blasts a stream of high-pressure water at a burner and lets it wash away layers and layers of dust. After what seems like more than enough time, Tim walks over to the grill and cranks up the heat. It roars to life and Tim makes a small surprised sound at the back of his throat.

“This can work,” He looks over at K. “Do you know how to cook?”

K shakes his head.

“Neither can I,” Tim admits. According to Stephanie Brown's memory, that’s a lie he keeps telling himself. He’s not _awful_ at cooking, but he’s not great at it. “I’ll coach you, sounds good?” 

K nods.

“Okay…” Tim looks at the grill. It’s only a little damp, and makes some quiet sizzling noises. “Unwrap.” He thrusts a box of beef patties into K’s hands. He fumbles with the plastic a little, but he manages to pull out two patties.

“Nice,” Tim says. “Let me see them.”

K holds up the patties up and Tim takes a good look at them. “They look good. Grill ‘em,” K obliges and throws the meat onto the grill. He listens to the loud sizzle they make

“I’m cooking breakfast with a zombie…” Tim mutters as he rummages around the rest of the kitchen for god knows what. When K decides the burgers are brown enough, he switches the grill off. K turns around and Tim shoves a dusty white plate into his hands.

“Rinse,” He points to the sink and scrubs his own invisible plate with his hands. K turns to the sink and listens to Tim move around and look for other things.

Tim makes a grunt of dissatisfaction. “Nothing else,” He blows a strand of hair out of his eyes.

“Find more,” K says, tilting his head toward the Burger King exit. 

“What else could there be?” Tim raises an eyebrow. K leads him outside past empty chairs and across the sticky floors to some nameless Mexican place’s kitchen. 

The boys slide over the front counter. K waits near the ordering monitor as Tim looks up at all the items on shelves. He looks a little happier with the results here versus at Burger King. “Canned beans, canned tomatoes, oh man--” He stands on the tips of his toes, showing off a mouthful of perfectly straight and white teeth. “--cool ranch Doritos! I haven’t had these since the breakou--” Tim cuts himself out and glances awkwardly at K.

K clears his throat and looks away.

“Uh, can you grab me this stuff?” Tim asks quietly.

K nods and squeezes into the small back area. It’s uncomfortable, his entire right side presses against Tim’s chest, but they remain silent. K slowly grabs a can of beans, tomatoes, and then two packs of the blue Doritos.

“Thanks,” Tim says. They both try to exit at the same time, but then up knocking against each other-- hard.

“Dude, you’re _big,”_ Tim says, rubbing his shoulder a little where K accidentally hit him. “How’d you get so…” He waves at K’s demeanor. “I mean, you must’ve been an athlete, right?” Tim’s face is a little red. Was it hot in the kitchen? K couldn’t feel temperature.

“Don’t know…” K shrugs.

Tim nods. “Um, yeah. I don’t know why I asked that,”

“Okay,” K says and they walk out one after the other. Tim pauses for a moment to put the Doritos inside his backpack and follows shortly after.

K doesn’t want any other zombie to stumble into the food court and see Tim eating human food, so he walks over to a table by the washrooms blocked out by blank menu screens for some Indian-Thai fusion shop. If he positions Tim correctly, nobody will be able to see him unless they walk directly up to the table. It's perfect.

“Here,” K says. “Eat… well.” He hands Tim a plastic package of cutlery he snagged while Tim was marveling at the inventory.

Tim unwraps the plastic eagerly and stabs at the food. After a few bites, he looks up.

“So, you don’t remember much about yourself,” Tim says it like a question. Open for debate.

K shrugs.

“How long ago did you… die?” Tim asks.

K shake his head and taps a finger against his temple. _Wish I knew._

“It couldn’t have been too long ago, I mean, you look good,” K’s eyes widen and he looks down at his sneakers. Tim shovels some tomatoes into his mouth before he realizes what he said. “I mean, you look good for a dead person!” He adds quickly. “You look good for a... zombie.”

K knows he’s dead, but hearing it come from someone else makes his head feel heavy. He shrugs again. Tim spoons more tomatoes into his mouth.

“I think I’ll grab a drink or something,” Tim says through a mouth half-full of tomatoes after a terrible moment of painfully awkward silence.

“Let… me,” K stands. “I know… good.”

“Alright,” Tim says, taking a bite from one of the beef patties.

K walks over to an industrial-looking restaurant and picks out a bottle of beer from a flickering drink display. He sets it down on the table in front of Tim.

“Ah, you spoil me, Mr. Zombie,” Tim stops eating and slyly picks up the bottle. “Ooo, Guinness. Haven’t had one of these since in a while.” He uses his knife to pop the lid off and chugs half of the bottle. Some of the liquid dribbles down his chin and he wipes it when he comes up for a breath. K smiles a little at him.

“I missed that,” Tim sighs after wiping his mouth and taking another bite of tomatoes and beef. K shrugs.

Tim tilts his head. “You’re full of weird surprises, aren’t you _Mr. Zombie?”_

K clears his throat. “Name…” He wheezes.

Tim sets down his fork. “You have a name?”

K nods. Tim’s lips shift into an interested half-smile. “What’s your name?”

K closes his eyes and thinks as hard as he can, trying to remember the rest of his name, but he’s tried this many times before and it never worked.

“Kay,” He starts, willing the rest of the letters to follow suit. They don't.

“Kay? Your name’s Kay?” Tim leans forward. K shakes his head.

“Kaaayhhh…” K groans, his eyes scrunching shut as tight as possible.

“K? It starts with a K?” Tim asks. K nods.

“Kyle?”

K shakes his head.

“Kai? Kevin? Christian with a K?”

“N…” K’s voice trails off.

“How about I just call you K?” Tim asks. “It’s better than _Mr. Zombie.”_

“K,” K smiles. It’s exactly what he’s been calling himself, and hearing it from Tim makes him feel… nicer. “Coo-luh.”

“Try some,” Tim slides the beer bottle across the table, a watchful look in his eyes. 

K knows he won’t taste anything from the beer, or even feel anything. He’d tried it before some time ago when he first came down here to the food court-- it’s how he knew it was there in the first place. But he doesn’t want to disappoint Tim, so he takes a long sip of the amber-colored drink.

He feels the fizzy, creamy liquid trickle down his throat. Some of it leaks out of a healing bullet wound-- another question he had. If he was dead, why did he heal?-- he took to the stomach last week. And then something happens. Something that gives him even more questions: 

He feels a gentle buzz spreading across his whole body. It doesn't warm his insides, but he feels the vibrations.

It can’t be. He has no proper bloodstream for the alcohol to spread through, no living cells in his brain for it to affect. Plus, he's embarrassed at how much of a lightweight he currently is.

Tim grins at K’s confused expression.

“You can have the rest. I’m more a champagne kind of guy either way,”

K takes another thirsty sip. He finds himself imagining Tim dressed in a tight black tuxedo, holding a flute of bubbling champagne in his left hand. He's raising the glass in greeting to a living version of K, dressed equally as formal and scrubbed clean of grime. Stephanie Brown is in a bright purple dress, clinging to K’s arm but when she sees Tim she steps away and winks suggestively at K. K pulls Tim into a chaste kiss when he gets close enough and Tim guides him toward the exit door even though they just got there…

K shakes his head to jolt himself out of the fantasy and slides the bottle away from himself. Tim snort-chuckles at the grimace on K’s face and finishes up the remainder of his tomatoes. They sit together quietly while Tim works on opening his can of beans, and K’s about to attempt a conversation starter when Tim looks up at him again. 

“So, _K._ Why are you keeping me here?”

The question punches K in the gut with the force of a ten-tonne truck. He looks down at the yellow lace on his left sneaker. Then at the red one on his right. Then he looks across the empty food court at a fake plant randomly placed in the middle of the mall hallway. He gestures around in the air.

“Safe,” He says plainly.

“Safe?” Tim runs a hand through his hair, sweeping it out of his eyes. “I’m a human in the middle of Zombieland. You think this is safe?”

K looks down again. 

“Look. You saved my life, and I’m grateful for that,” Tim folds his hands together. K notices a thick silver ring on his right index finger. He’d seen it before, not in a memory but as himself. “K, you snuck me in here so by that logic, I’m pretty sure you can take me back out.”

“Wait,” K mumbles. “They think… you’re new…” He clasps his hands together. A handshake. A union. Tim seems to get the message because he frowns.

“How long do I have to wait?” Tim’s on the edge of his seat. His eyes look more gray than blue in the food court’s weak morning light.

“Few days. Then they…" _Spit it out, K, it's not that hard._ "Forget,”

“Man,” Tim pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Be okay,” K assures him. “Promise.”

Tim doesn’t say anything. Instead, he pushes his plate aside and pulls out a thin rectangle of metal from the front pocket of his backpack. An iPod. K doesn’t know how he knows, but he does. He pulls out the leather notebook K saw in his birthday memory, a mangled red pen, and a tangled white earbud cord.

Tim plugs in the chews on a spoonful of beans and scribbles a note into his journal, ignoring K’s presence. K hates how quickly the atmosphere turned hostile. He wishes he could be freed from his heavy prison of rotting flesh, re-introduce himself with his _own name,_ and sweep Tim off of his feet. K’s about to stand up and go back to the flower shop when Tim pulls out his left earbud and swallows his food.

“You’re different, aren’t you?” Tim says.

K doesn’t say anything back. “Because I’ve never heard a zombie talk, other than all that moaning, and I’ve never seen a zombie take any interest in humans beyond eating them.” Tim closes his notebook and looks at K so intense, if he could blush, he would. “Are there any others like you?”

K thinks about Cissie. While she was a good friend to him and somewhat different from him, he wasn’t sure she’d show the same amount of restraint he did with Tim.

“Don’t know,”

“A few days…” Tim looks at the canned beans.

K nods. 

“What am I supposed to do?” Tim drums his slender fingers on the table in a random beat. Probably to the tune of whatever song he was listening to right now.

K thinks. Immediately, a series of sappy and romantic clips flash before his eyes-- movies he must have seen when he was living, and moments Steph Brown shared with Tim.

“I’ll… do things,” He says with a smile.

_Well, that_ totally _wasn’t creepy._ K thinks to himself.

Tim laughs a little and continues eating.

“You want?” Tim offers him the left earbud. K takes it and tries to put it in his ear, but it ends up pulling out Tim’s.

“Shoot,” Tim leans in closer to help K put the earbud in. When he leans back into his chair, the cord is a thin, tense bridge across the table. “Nah, this won’t work. C’mere.” He scoots over and makes a spot for K’s chair next to his.

The music is calm and smooth compared to the stuff K has on his boombox. A man's voice sings over a nice bassline.

“Superma... market," K says. The song that played on his boom box earlier.

"Yeah," Tim smiles. "The Clash is my favorite band."

K didn't really have an opinion on the music, but he now decides he likes it. Another song plays after the current one finishes, the same singer. And then another. He watches Tim finish up his food and close his eyes. They sit, shoulders touching and feeling each other breathing. After a while, K can smell the faint sweetness of life again, energy poorly masked by his own blood. But even for Tim’s protection, he can’t bring himself to touch his still-bleeding hand and smudge the black gunk against Tim’s skin again.

K looks down at his other hand, pale white tinged with a bit of green. He imagines it pinker and tanned, warm enough to hold someone without scaring them. He imagines being self-assured and remembering who he was.

_Oh, to be alive would be a great adventure._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had the top gun soundtrack on loop while writing a good chunk of this ahaha sorry if it isn't rOmAntiC enough or somethin


End file.
